Make Me Real
by FandomJumper65
Summary: He'd been alone in that house for the better part of his life; even when there were visitors, they never saw or spoke to him. Surely this new guest couldn't be any different, right? Ruscan, rating may change, formerly titled "The Curse"
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Matthew sighed quietly as the boredom that was his constant companion settled in again, his gaze fixed out the window at the old gravel driveway that had been laid a relatively short time after he'd taken up residence in the old house.

_Taken up residence._ That made it sound nice, as though he'd spent some time looking at different houses, mulling over the possibilities, even made it sound as though he could change his mind if he wanted, find another house to live in. _Prisoner _reflected his role in this house far better than the word _resident,_ reflected how trapped and alone he felt, yet how at the same time privacy had become a privilege rather than a right, and all too often one that he couldn't afford.

The sound of a motor approaching the house caused Matthew's eyes to dart to the highway, settling quickly on the old truck that turned onto the short dirt road that led to the house. _Alfred's here!_ He sat up in excitement, a large grin spreading across his cheeks. His eyes never left his twin as he stepped out of the truck, then strode to its bed, from which he picked up several bags before starting toward the door. Only when he was out of sight did Matthew leave the windowsill, his feet pounding on the wooden floors as he ran down the stairs and toward his brother.

"Mattie!" Alfred beamed the second he saw his twin, setting the bags in his hand on the counter. He opened his arms wide and Matthew ran to embrace him, hugging tightly to his loud and somewhat obnoxious brother, who, despite everything, was the only person on the planet that could see and hear him, the only one in the world that knew he existed.

For that was the nature of his curse.

Alfred pulled back from the hug, a large grin filling his face. "I got somethin' for ya," he beamed. "It's in the truck, I gotta go get it."

Matthew nodded, letting go of his brother and following him to the door. He couldn't help his own smile at his brother's excitement, and when Alfred was out the door, he pressed his nose to the invisible, concrete-like barrier that kept him in the house, which he'd bruised his hand against before but nobody else could feel. It was at every entrance and exit, every door and window in the house, blocking him from ever leaving the old place; he'd checked long ago.

Matthew heard Alfred slam the car door, then watched him walk back into sight, carrying some sort of carrying case, made out of cloth. Maybe it was for a book? Alfred had bought him some before that he thought he'd like; after all, it was his only source of entertainment when there wasn't anyone in the house, especially since the last owners, or as he preferred to see them "guests", had taken the television with them. Then again, it looked too tall and thin to be carrying a lot of books; maybe it was one very special book that had its own case?

Still puzzled, he stepped to the side when Alfred walked back to the door, then followed him to the table, his eyes glued to the strange case. Now that he was closer, he could see that it had a front pocket that had something… _lumpy _in it. Far too lumpy to be a book. What could it be?!

Alfred grinned at his brother's obvious curiosity. After a moment, however, his smile turned more mischievous. "Mattie. Dude." He jerked his thumb to the bags. "We gotta put away the groceries first! Don't want them to go bad while you drool over that thing."

Matthew reluctantly agreed, giving the case one final glance before grabbing some bags and carrying them to the kitchen. Following behind with the rest, Alfred chuckled slightly at his brother's eagerness to get to the bag. "Ohey, guess what?"

"Hmm?" Matthew's mind was admittedly elsewhere as he grabbed the milk and walked over to the refrigerator.

"You remember that old truck that had the busted motor, the one that I got my truck right after?" He didn't wait for confirmation, pausing only long enough to close the pantry. "I sold it for a few hundred."

"A few hundred?" Matthew echoed in wonder. "What're you gonna do with it?"

Alfred laughed. "Damn, your sense of money really is old, isn't it? A few hundred isn't that much, dude. But it was enough for that thing I got you," he added in a singsong voice.

"You mean you spent several hundred dollars?!" Matthew was incredulous.

"Dude, chill! It's not that much! Besides," Alfred grinned, "I got a discount."

"Oh? How?" Matthew grabbed several cans of spaghetti, then walked toward the pantry.

"Senior citizen discount."

Matthew almost dropped the spaghetti. "What? Alfred, you're not a senior citizen!"

"Sure I am!" Alfred beamed. "I did it online. All they wanted was the year I was born! Give 'em that and I'm a senior citizen!"

Matthew blinked. As crazy as it sounded, Alfred was telling the truth. Not very long after Matthew had gotten trapped in the house, they had discovered that they had both entirely stopped aging. Since Matthew had been under this curse, for lack of a better word, for coming up on fifty years now, that would make Alfred perfectly capable of getting a senior citizen discount online, where from what he understood they didn't look at your face.

The rest of the groceries were put away in a comfortable silence, Matthew's mind scrambling unsuccessfully to figure out what could possibly be in the case Alfred had brought. It took about twenty minutes to get it all put away, by which point Matthew had ruled out everything from a pet to one of those new music player things.

"Aright," Alfred grinned as he put the last of the cans of green beans into the pantry. "Let's go get that thing now, huh?" Matthew followed him into the hall, where he grabbed the case he'd put on the small decorative table and took it into the living room. Setting it on the table in front of a chair, Alfred laid a hand on it, standing behind the chair in question as he gestured for Matthew to sit.

"Before I open this up," he explained, "since you know like nothing about anything when it comes to new stuff, there's a couple of things I gotta tell you." He paused. "First, you can't get it wet. It'll like _die _if you get it wet."

Matthew began to quietly wonder if he'd been gotten some sort of strange alien pet.

"Also. It's made to be portable, but it's _not _made to take a lot of slamming around, so if I were you I'd find a nice place in the attic to put it or something where you're not gonna be pickin' it up all the time. Kay?"

Matthew nodded. _Made _to be portable. Definitely no pet then.

Alfred grinned, unzipping the front compartment first and pulling out… a cord? Yes, it was a cord of some sort, a good ten or eleven feet long. Well… that explained why it was lumpy… but what could Alfred have possibly gotten him that came with a cord?

Alfred paused before he opened the main compartment. "Hang on. These aren't like the same fifty year old plugs, are they? Cause I've heard that can be like dangerous."

Matthew shook his head. "No, somebody had them fixed, it was years ago. I stayed in the attic while they did it, it was easier to stay out of the way."

"Aright, good," Alfred grinned. "Here, you open this and I'll plug this in."

Matthew didn't need to be told twice. He pulled the zipper open as fast as he could, pushing the packaging off of the… rectangular object? Matthew looked it over, blinking in confusion. It opened up to reveal something with letters on the bottom and a screen on top, something he recognized from TV, as well as what seemed to be a power button and several holes along the sides, of different shapes and sizes.

Alfred came back with the other end of the power cord just as Matthew was debating whether to turn it on. He plugged the cord into a round hole on the top left-hand side of the laptop, causing an orange light to come on the front.

"That'll turn green when it's charged," Alfred explained. "Now let's get you set up, huh?" He pressed the power button, causing the screen to light up for a moment and then go black as text filtered on it. "Don't worry about that, that's just the boot-up screen. Aha, here we go!" Alfred beamed as he pulled up the desktop. "Now the first thing you're gonna want to do is get antivirus software…"

The two quickly became engrossed, one with setting up and teaching his brother how to use the computer, and the other simply with learning and being able to use the new technology. In fact, the two were so engrossed that they didn't hear the motor roaring outside.

They didn't hear the engine stop in the driveway.

They didn't hear the car door slammed, didn't hear the comments about someone's truck trespassing on someone else's property.

They didn't hear the key turn in the lock of the front door.

"Okay, you got your antivirus set up, you downloaded Firefox, now all you gotta do is—"

Alfred was interrupted when Matthew fell quite literally through the chair and landed with a solid thump on the floor. Panic rose in his chest when he realized what that meant and his gaze darted frantically about the room. "Alfred, look be—"

"What are you doing in my house?"


	2. Chapter 2

After the hard day he'd had even _finding _this house, Ivan was pretty sure that the _last _thing he needed to find there was someone deciding to make himself at home.

Then again, from all the stories he'd heard about this house when people had finally realized which one he meant, perhaps this kid was going to try to stay the night in the local "haunted" house. Still, private property was private property.

The truck in the driveway had been the first, but not the only, clue that there was an intruder. The rather loud one-sided conversation coming from inside had surprised him, though. Was there a _crazy _person in his newly inherited house?

After opening the door, the sound became even clearer, its point of origin obviously the living room. He followed it until he came across a person in his late teens or early twenties, leaning over a computer like he was doing something on it, such as starting music or something, that was only going to take a second and then he would move on to whatever was next. At the moment, however, he wasn't looking at the computer screen but at the seat of the chair for whatever reason.

Upon determining that there was nothing there, Ivan decided to speak. "What are you doing in my house?"

The intruder gave a short gasp, whirling around to face him. "_Dude you scared the crap outta me!_"

Ivan blinked. "I am not the one that broke into someone else's house."

The blonde's hand flew nervously to the back of his neck. "…Right. You think I'm like a thief or something."

Ivan folded his arms.

"I'm… Wait, you're not the guy that owns the house."

Ivan blinked. _How _would he know that? Had his grandfather somehow come into contact with this kid? No, his grandfather had only come out to this house once, five years ago, right after he'd bought it. The man had been, after all, what a lot of people liked to call _eccentric._ "I am. I just inherited this house from my grandfather. He died."

"…Oh. Ouch. Sorry. Didn't know." There was a moment of silence, then, "Look. I was… uh…" He whispered under his breath for a moment. "I was your grandfather's house-cleaner guy. I didn't know you weren't him at first cause he, yaknow, never comes over…"

Ivan could _feel_ the lie. "Okay!" he grinned. "It does not matter. If you were not hired, you leave! If you were hired, you are now fired and you leave! Either way, I will never see you around here again, _da?_"

The person paused for a moment, looking almost as though he was spacing out, before nodding. "Okay, dude. Sure. Never again. Gotcha." He strode quickly out the door, forgetting his laptop in his haste, Ivan noticed. _If he is going to be sneaking in, _the Russian decided, _then anything he is leaving behind is mine._ He followed the probably would-be burglar out the door to make sure he actually _left,_ then walked back to collect the…

…Where did the laptop go?

* * *

Matthew raced up to the attic as fast as he could, his heart pounding in his chest as he clutched both the laptop and charger to his chest. It had been one major gamble he and Alfred had agreed to make, Alfred whispering, that the house's new owner would follow Alfred out so that Matthew could grab his laptop. He was only glad it had worked, the tall man not even glancing back as the laptop appeared to float up the little-used steps to the attic.

Matthew slammed shut the trapdoor that led into the attic, sitting down heavily on top of it to ensure privacy. He set the laptop down beside him, then put his head in his hands.

If it was just the invisibility to everyone but Alfred and inability to leave the house, Matthew wouldn't have had such a problem. An invisible man can eventually convince others he exists. If he wanted, he could even bundle up and cover every inch of his body, thereby seeming normal. However, Matthew didn't have those luxuries.

He shivered, rubbing his upper arms for warmth, the thin, worn fabric of the sweater he was wearing simply unable to even impact the cold of the lonely attic. His fingers played absently at the beginnings of a hole in the sleeve near his right elbow, his mind in other places.

He'd almost forgotten what it was like to be able to go outside, to be visible to someone besides Alfred that wasn't drunk, high, or otherwise mentally incapacitated, to talk to people out on the street if he wanted. In fact, he wasn't entirely sure that he _hadn't _forgotten entirely. He closed his eyes with a long sigh, his eyes closing as he pulled his arms in closer to his body.

He didn't even know how this had happened, to tell the truth. All he knew was that over the course of one night, possibly even while he was sleeping, he lost the ability to lose the house and to be seen or heard by others. His best guess was that it was a curse of some sort, since there seemed to be beyond any rational explanation, but who had cursed him and why they had done it remained a complete mystery.

He stood, walking over to the window in the hope that he might be able to see Alfred leaving. The old, beaten up red truck was just pulling out of the driveway. They'd probably never know the real reason that Matthew had been trapped here.

* * *

Alfred slammed the door to his truck when he climbed in, feeling even worse than he usually did after a visit to his younger twin. It wasn't his brother's company; he enjoyed being around Mattie a lot, and the time he could spend with him was always the best part of the day.

No, the bad part came whenever he had to leave, whenever he had to look into Mattie's eyes and tell him that he was going to be alone again. He always made sure when he could to promise to come back soon, but it was never _enough._

It only got worse when he sat in his truck, remembered what had happened fifty years ago, that night that was burned into his memory.

When he remembered that this was all his fault.

Him and his big mouth.

He revved the engine for a minute before leaving, as he always had to with this old truck. He'd gotten it because at the time it had been what he could afford, and now he was just too attached to it to get a different one. He tried to concentrate on the road in front of him, tried not to let any other thoughts through.

Unbidden, his mind flashed back yet again to that night, the one that had actually started all of this.

Actually, no. It had _started _a few weeks before. He'd had a run of bad luck, at this point he couldn't even remember everything he'd owed—it _had _been fifty years—but it was a lot, and he'd started to get desperate. He'd just started living on his own, he and Mattie both had just gotten separate houses, he had bills to pay, and he had a bunch of other debts. So, he'd decided to get a drink to settle his mind.

That was when _she'd _shown up. Old woman, at least ninety. She'd sat down next to him, offered to get him out of debt completely, his bills and everything, maybe even make him rich if things went well. He'd laughed a little and told her something along the lines of "If you could get me out of this, I'd happily give you any house you wanted."

Mistake number one.

She'd disappeared after that, not that he'd gone looking. Strangely though, his luck had turned. Suddenly, everything he touched turned gold. He soon paid off every debt he had, plus gotten himself a comfortable life. Mattie had told him to be careful, it couldn't last forever, don't depend on it, but did he listen? Hell no.

Mistake number two.

Then had come _that _night. That same old woman had shown up again, right on Mattie's doorstep when he'd been paying his little brother a visit. He _still _didn't know how the hell she'd figured out he was staying there and that he'd be the one to answer. His best guess was the same powers that had allowed her to curse Mattie. But answer the door he had. She'd informed him that she'd filled her half of the bargain and wanted him to give her a house.

But not just any house.

_Mattie's _house.

After hearing his protests about how this was _Mattie's _house and he couldn't just _give _it away, _Mattie _loved it to death—admittedly an exaggeration—and how she couldn't _possibly _be serious, how could _he _owe _her _a house, she'd explained, reminded him of that night in the bar, tried to tell him she'd done it magically.

And what had he done?

He'd laughed in her face.

Mistake number three.

At that, the woman had become furious. "If your brother is so attached to this house," she'd shouted, "then he shall _stay _in it!" She'd muttered under her breath incoherently, then had strode off. He'd decided she was nuts and had gone back inside, deciding to just forget that had ever happened.

It was only later, when he'd gotten Mattie to agree to come to his house, when Mattie tried to leave the house and couldn't, no matter what he did, that Alfred had truly realized what he'd done. Since then, he'd put off telling Mattie that it was his fault, at first with 'later would be way better,' then 'later' turned into 'tomorrow', 'next week'… Eventually he decided that he couldn't tell him at all, because it had simply been so long that Mattie would instantly ask why he didn't tell him in the first place.

Alfred pulled into his own driveway, parking his car and stepping out to go into his house. Naturally, it wasn't the same one he'd had fifty years ago; when people could _see_ you not aging, you had to go to more drastic measures to hide, the first being moving a minimum of every ten years. So far, he'd managed to find towns far enough apart from each other that were still within a reasonable distance of Mattie's, but he wasn't certain what he'd do about the _next _fifty years. Oh, well. Surely he wouldn't be found out if he went back to a town he'd been in thirty or forty years ago, when they expect him to be an old man? They'd probably just think he was a relative or lookalike. No big deal, right?

When he walked into the house, the first thing he did was to retrieve a bottle of beer from the fridge and flop on the couch with it. Visits to Mattie always made him feel bad, and seeing that Mattie's house was being occupied again only made it worse. Alfred had tried to keep the ownership of the house as long as possible, had tried his hardest not to put his little brother in the position he was currently in, but at one point he'd had to mortgage his house. He'd figured paying it back was no big deal, if they took the house he'd just move in with Mattie, right?

Only he'd accidentally mortgaged the wrong house. He'd found out too late, and the bank had taken and then sold the house his brother was in. The only way he could keep from blaming himself for that, too, was to guess that the old witch that did this had set it up so that Mattie would _have _to be pawned off from person to person; it had happened not too long after the initial curse, only two or three years. About long enough for all of the money Alfred had gotten to dry out.

The teen sighed, leaning back on the couch and taking a long drink of beer. Though he'd only spent a few minutes with his brother, every feeling of guilt he had was attacking full-force. He checked his watch, then stood, capping the beer. He was going to have to move again soon; the people around here were beginning to comment on the fact that he _looked _eighteen but was supposedly almost thirty. As such, he was having people come around today to talk about the new house he was looking at buying.

Today was going to be a long day.


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry for taking so long to post this chapter! I've had a lot going on lately and haven't had much of a chance to write on it. I'll try to get the next one up faster, but I can't make any promises. **

* * *

Matthew jolted to wakefulness at the sound of the alarm blaring in his ear, his hand shooting out from under the covers to fall hard on the button that turned it off. He pushed himself into a sitting position and stretched, a yawn forcing its way out. Pushing his legs over the edge of his bed, Matthew felt on the nightstand for his glasses, placing them gently on his nose, then glanced at the time on the clock. 6:01. Perfect.

He stood and quickly dressed, changing from fifty-year-old pajamas to fifty-year-old shirt and pair of jeans, his bare feet padding down the hall as he made his way to the kitchen. Making the breakfast of his guests on their first morning to wake up at his house had become a sort of tradition for him over the years, for multiple reasons, including that it let him see how they would react to more unusual occurrences in the house. He didn't want to scare his guests, after all.

Matthew hummed softly to himself as he mixed the batter together, remembering the many other times he'd done this exact same thing. He had a simple method to waking up before his guests so that they'd actually have time to eat his meal, yet not so early that it would be cold. Their first night, he would wait for them to set an alarm of some sort to wake up by. If he knew when they woke up, he'd set an alarm in the room he was sleeping in for earlier, using an alarm he kept in the attic. If he didn't, he'd set his alarm for 4 a.m. and would wait for the guest to wake up on their own at whatever time was normal, and their breakfast would come the next day. He smiled softly as he remembered a few of his briefer but more interesting guests.

His favorites were the ones that acted surprised but not horrified or scared by the meal's unknown source, the ones that accepted it without a complaint. Granted, that hadn't happened very often, and most of the times it had happened were closer to the beginning of his entrapment, but remembering their happiness at his gesture was still enough to bring a little cheer to his mind, even if his contact with them could never go much farther beyond that.

With practiced ease, he poured the batter into four medium-sized circles, then put the extra in the bowl aside. His restricted ability to do most things over the years meant that anything he _could _do, especially if it was something he liked to do such as making pancakes, he had become extremely good at. It felt like only a few minutes before he was taking them off of the pan and placing them on a plate, filling a glass with orange juice and grabbing a napkin and fork to take out as well. He carefully set them just right in front of one of the chairs at the round table, then went back for the syrup.

Ivan walked into the room just a few seconds too early; the syrup wound up dropping a few inches to the table, falling through Matthew's hands the second he was observed. That, it had turned out, was another rule to this curse; only the clothes he'd had before this started stayed on him if someone looked, and them only because they were apparently invisible with him.

The Russian stood for a moment, obviously taken by surprise by the breakfast awaiting him. Matthew took a step back, waiting eagerly for Ivan's reaction, though he was trying not to get his hopes up for a positive one as the last few had been… not so much. He'd been considering ending the tradition, actually, but he kept convincing himself that the _next_ one would be happy, the _next_ person's day would be made by it…

At first, the meal that had been laid out completely took Ivan off guard. However, it took him only a few moments to figure out what must have happened: his sister—or someone like her, his family had a strange knack for attracting exactly the wrong kind of people—must have found out he was staying here and decided to…

…He wasn't sure about the logic here. Then again, you never could be with his little sister. Best to act as enthusiastic as possible so as not to upset or anger her. "Ooh, spasibo! …Ah, to whoever did this… if you're still here and can hear me… This looks delicious!"

Matthew's head snapped up in surprise. He'd honestly been expecting him to get spooked or otherwise upset, as most had. However, instead, the Russian seemed perfectly content to sit down and pick up the fork, not even questioning whether it was poisoned. Although it was a little disconcerting that he'd acted almost like he _knew _Matthew was somewhere around there, waiting for his response… Matthew shook the thought out of his head. The important part was that he hadn't been scared away. Maybe that meant he could try to get this guest to understand his problem, maybe even get him to help!

_You can get that figured out later, _Matthew reminded himself. _You don't even know that he'll accept the idea yet. All he did was enjoy his breakfast without questioning where it came from._ Pushing those thoughts aside, he leaned against the wall in an attempt to get more comfortable. "I would take a chair," he told his oblivious houseguest, "but I'd just go right through." Even though he knew that there was no way that they could hear him, Matthew sometimes liked to talk to those that entered his house. In the beginning, he'd done it in the hope that maybe there was one of them that could hear and see him, like Alfred. As time wore on, it grew into more of a habit until he found himself talking to complete strangers as if they were the best of friends. "There are more pancakes in the kitchen if you want them," he continued. "I'll just have whatever's left for my own breakfast after you leave."

Breakfast passed rather slowly for Matthew, just watching Ivan eat and occasionally making one-sided conversation or responding to a remark Ivan made. Still, he had to admit that it was better than having the large house to himself. So he relaxed, sat with his back leaning against the wall, and pretended to have conversations with his latest guest, pretended not to notice that he never received a response.

"So you're done then?" Matthew asked as Ivan stood, grabbing the empty plate, fork, and glass. "…Or are you going for more?" The question was answered when Matthew followed Ivan into the kitchen and saw him dump them in the sink, then turn to walk out the door. The undetected teen got out of the way just in time; he didn't care if it didn't hurt _or _if it had been fifty years, it was _still _unsettling when people went through him.

The sound of a ringing cell phone startled both Matthew and Ivan. The Russian jumped, fumbling in his pocket until he found the offending phone. "Privet?" A moment of silence passed, followed by a conversation which took place entirely in Russian. Matthew stayed awkwardly by the wall, not sure whether he should leave or not, or if it even mattered.

As he listened to the conversation he couldn't understand, Matthew found himself wondering what sort of guest Ivan would turn out to be. Would he be the kind that shut themselves in _his _room all day, reading or doing whatever so that Matthew couldn't enter because he couldn't open the door when they would see on the other side and couldn't go through because there _wasn't _anyone looking on his side? Or would he be of the kind that spent most days doing things outside the house, coming home mostly at night, making it actually worse than when nobody was in the house because he couldn't even ask Alfred to come over? Or maybe, just maybe, would he spend time at home, outside of his room, so that Matthew might be able to help with small things when he wasn't looking, to get to know him a little?

He didn't know, but he found himself starting to hope—_really _hope—that this time, his guest would stay, at least for a while.

* * *

Ivan hung up the phone after a long and involved conversation with his older sister, mostly his reassuring her that yes, he was okay, yes, everything was going fine, no, he didn't know if he was going to be keeping his grandfather's house yet, no, he didn't believe any of the rumors that she'd apparently heard about the place as well…

It had taken a while to get off the phone.

The Russian dropped the phone on the table, sitting with a sigh. Honestly, there were several things about this place that had surprised him. For one, he hadn't expected it to be fully furnished, when his grandfather hadn't even _visited _in several years. The food that was already in the pantry and the refrigerator, none of it even remotely old, had also caught him off guard. Then there was the _lived-in _feel to the place, almost as if someone _else _owned it and _he _was the intruder.

He quickly shook those feelings off. His grandfather had obviously paid someone to have the furniture put in and the house kept up, even to the point of looking like someone lived there, because he was eccentric.

Da. That had to be it.

Shaking those thoughts off, Ivan sat on the couch. He wasn't planning on going job hunting until tomorrow, to give him a day to settle in. Unfortunately, the television he'd had shipped here hadn't arrived yet, either, leaving him with… not much to do.

_Ah, well. _Shrugging to himself, Ivan took a book from the shelf and settled back on the couch for a quiet afternoon of reading, with nothing to pull him away.

However, no matter how hard he focused on the book, Ivan couldn't get his mind off of the strangest feeling that there was someone watching him.

* * *

_The young, beautiful woman smirked as she put the finishing touches on the spell, copying it to a fresh sheet of paper in her long, flowing handwriting._

_Behind her, a fairly young child frowned, tilting his head in confusion. "I thought you already punished them," he pointed out. "The spell you cast when you were there last night?"_

"_Oh, no, no," she shook her head, laughing quietly. "That was nothing more than a temporary hold spell, my dear. It simply sealed him in the house, and will be gone by tomorrow. But by then, I'll have a better spell in place!" Then she frowned, looking over her spell. "…Perhaps a bit harsh," she conceded. "So… hm. Yes…" She crumpled the paper with the spell on it and tossed it into the wastebasket by the desk, taking a new sheet of paper to craft a new spell. "…They will have a way out," the woman decided. "But only one. And it won't be easy…"_


End file.
